We are delighted for ACAMH Board member, Professor Tamsin Ford who has been awarded a CBE for services to psychiatry. Tamsin has been at the forefront of helping to transform health services and schools in the UK.
Tamsin is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Exeter Medical School (UEMS). She completed her core training in psychiatry on the Royal London Hospital Training rotation and at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals and she completed her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London.
She moved to Exeter in 2007, where she leads a group of researchers whose work focuses on the effectiveness of services and interventions to support mental health and well-being of children and young people. She was an Editor for ACAMH’s journal CAMH six years, stepping down as lead editor in June 2014.
Tamsin’s work is regularly cited in government and NHS and more recently education policy documents and she has also advised Ofsted about mental health in relation to the new inspection framework.
Professor Ford is currently examining if a course called “Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management” can enhance teachers’ skills in promoting well-being among their pupils. So far she has found it can have a sustained improvement in concentration and low level classroom behaviour. The work led to a team of colleagues from Exeter leading a review for the Education Endowment Fund about how best to support children to behave better in school.
Professor Ford’s research also shows excluded children are more likely to develop mental health conditions, a fifth of 17 to 19-year-old girls self-harm or attempt suicide and six times more children self-report mental illness than 20 years ago.
ACAMH Members can see a recent lecture she gave on ‘The incredible years teacher programme – update on recent trials’ given at the Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture and National Conference in March 2019.